sandboxing an existing OSX app

Question

I have an existing OSX app that supports OSX 10.5 onwards. I want to publish it to the AppStore and therefore I need to sandbox the app. I guess sandbox app should be supporing 10.7 onwards.

• The app uses a folder in the username directory to create temp files etc
• It also copies a sql db file which already has empty tables to the same temp folder and upates records as the app is used.
• Furthermore if there is a crash it picks up logs from the crashlog folder of osx and requests user to submit them to developer.

Question

with a sanbox app, where do I store temp files ? Where should I place the db file which can be read/witten to + new App update should be able to find exsting db file. Should the custom code for crash reporter be kept or be made redundant ?

Thanks

Answer 1

where do I store temp files ?

In the directory recommended by NSTemporaryDirectory(). (This applies to both sandboxed and non-sandboxed applications.)

Where should I place the db file which can be read/witten to

In your application's Application Support directory. Use NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains() to find it, then append your application's name. Again, this is the same whether you're sandboxed or not.

new App update should be able to find exsting db file.

Not possible. You can ask the user to locate the existing file with a NSOpenPanel, but you can't open it yourself, because it'd be outside your sandbox.

Should the custom code for crash reporter be kept or be made redundant ?

You'll need to remove it, because it won't work under sandboxing — crash reports are not stored to your sandbox. You will receive crash reports for your application through iTunes Connect.

Alternatively, you may want to look into a third-party crash reporting service like PLCrashReporter.